Binoo Joshi
JK News Today Commentary
That the situation in Kashmir is deteriorating is a statement of facts , but what is more alarming is that no steps are being taken to curb the ever pacing cycle of violence that has scared the common man and dented the image of the Valley beyond repair .
When Lashkar militants killed two policemen in SMHS hospital in Srinagar on Tuesday , they had no qualms about making hospital as a place for staging the terror attack to free Pakistani militant Naved Jutt . That is not only the deterioration in the situation , but also a challenge to the social milieu in Kashmir . It has to be measured in the backdrop of the militants killing worshipers outside mosques and choosing their targets almost every where neither homes are safe nor the work places.
Another challenge is not just how to plug the loopholes in the security system that led to such an attack in the hospital , but the silence with which the attack was greeted by civil society . Separatists were quiet , because they are shy of summoning the courage in cases where the terror attacks are involved. This is a matter of security of doctors and patients, but the silence on their part is also intriguing . This silence amounts to silently accepting what happened in the hospital on Tuesday . That, in some sense is more dangerous than the attack itself..
Read with the disclosures in the Legislative Assembly that 120 youth joined militancy in 2017 while 160 others did so in the previous two years , it reveals that the youth are opting for terrain of violence from the natural soil of the normal life . There must be a number of reasons and no one particular reason can define their opting for militancy where they know the only certainty is death .
The problem is that the youth are living in an atmosphere of despair, where they find that their educational pursuits and yearning for peace is taken for granted and those who make noise or cause disturbances are rewarded with the appointments through backdoor . This also stymies the talent of those seeking to make it big in their lives due to their hard work.
A course-correction is needed . That can come only when there is a narrative of consensus as to how to deal with the problem of militancy in a holistic manner and to keep the youth engaged in positive track so that they don’t astray . For this , there is a need to change the content and core of the atmosphere . The violence needs to be pushed to the margins and then edged out completely . That is the only way out.
